March 05, 2015

As is my ability to spell "deteriorating" correctly on the firstsecond third try.

***

They have eaten all the waffles and are clamoring for more waffles. HOW CAN YOU EAT SO MANY WAFFLES?

No one wants to go outside and play in the snow, because fuck snow. They're all tired of snow, and would rather climb on Mom's head while she types and cause her to reflexively protect her coffee cup every 2.3 seconds because BODIES and LIMBS and FLAILING MUPPET ARMS.

***

My attempt at a Pinterest-y project of making ninja masks out of t-shirts managed to amuse them, but I can't stop thinking they look more like ISIS fighters than ninjas. This is...vaguely unnerving.

***

Ezra lost another tooth yesterday.

I posted an Instagram of him, with a caption reminding myself to not forget about the Tooth Fairy. Other people chimed in and we all bonded over occasionally forgetting about the Tooth Fairy, even though this time -- THIS TIME -- I totally wasn't going to forget about the Tooth Fairy.

***

I forgot about the Tooth Fairy.

However, after I remembered this morning, it seemed as if Ezra had also forgotten, as he failed to voice any disappointment over his lack of monetary compensation. We took this opportunity to sneak into his room and belatedly swap his tooth for a dollar.

But when prompted about the Tooth Fairy, Ezra said that yes, she HAD come and left money under his pillow. A five-dollar bill, to be exact, which he'd already deposited in his piggy bank.

One of us is obviously going crazy. It's too early in the day to say who it is for sure.

***

It is cold. I cannot find my slippers or any matching socks. We are out of firewood.

February 19, 2015

My Internet is getting fixed today! At some point between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., anyway.

Thanks for that super-helpful service window, Verizon. I'll just sit here and wait for the inevitable, which is that you will not arrive during any of the many hours I am here sitting and waiting, but will of course arrive during the 15 minutes that I absolutely have leave the house to pick Ike up from school. And you'll get all huffy and impatient and I'll be all apologetic and flustered and we'll get off on the wrong foot, all because my three year old can't "drive" or "cross major intersections by himself." Yet, anyway.

Let's not get off on the wrong foot, Imaginary Huffy Verizon Authority Figure.

***

Speaking of Ike, he has decided that he is done with preschool, and the fact that he is not allowed to attend kindergarten at his brothers' school has taken over as the latest Three Year Old Worst Injustice In The World, At Least Since This Morning When He Was Served Milk In The Wrong Cup.

(Yes. STILL with the wrong cup. And the dark blue plate. We've also added: Non-Ninja-Turtle Underwear is basically Garbage Underwear, and there is only one acceptable pair of socks in the world, and any time you deny him a plastic straw for his cup you are basically violating his human rights.)

So...yeah. Ike's been a little difficult lately, and even though "lately" technically dates back to his second birthday, I'm guessing some of this has to do with all the travel and upheaval of the past couple weeks.

Because this blog isn’t the only thing struggling in the face of the New World Order (aka Mommy Went & Got A Real Job). There's no denying that this month HAS been really tough on the boys, and while I like to think I shook the majority of my mom-guilt off right around the time I had a second baby and was like, FUCK ALL THAT, LET’S JUST KEEP EVERYONE ALIVE UNTIL BEDTIME…well, I am feeling it pretty hard right now.

At bedtime, Ike makes me promise that I won’t go away again. He crawls into bed with us more nights than not, claiming everything from bad dreams to phantom tummy aches. During the day, He’s clingy and needy and weeps when I drop him off at school. “Don’t leave me!” he sobs as I hand him over to the school staff and get back in the car, feeling every uncomfortable feeling one can possibly feel in the heart area.

The Friday after my first trip, Noah’s class had a field trip. He begged me to chaperone, reminding me that since I’d been unable to chaperone his LAST trip because of work, I’d made some vague promises about “next time.”

So I signed up to chaperone. Less than 12 full hours after I stepped off the plane. MOM POINTS!

But then I stepped off the plane and discovered that my entire family was sick, and violently so. Noah recovered in time to attend the field trip, but I had to back out of chaperoning to stay home with Ezra and Ike. He was devastated.

(Also the only thing I brought back from Orlando for them was a collection of theme park maps from my hotel lobby. Legoland, Harry Potter World, Disney, etc.)

(To be fair, they all really like the maps. But have all now planned our next family vacation with them and hoo boy, it sounds exhausting and expensive and I would really rather not.)

***

(BREAKING NEWS: I started and abandoned this post so many hours ago that I can now report that I managed to get to and from Ike's school successfully, with no sign of or huffy phone calls from the Verizon guy. I suppose that's a plus, but now means the rest of my afternoon and evening involve MORE WAITING.)

***

The Friday after my second trip (from which I brought them ABSOLUTELY NOTHING), all three of their classes had their Valentine’s Day parties. Jason had thankfully remembered to pick up a few packages of cheap drugstore Valentines, so I spent most of Thursday night trying to get the boys to fill them out. MOM POINTS!

After Ike threw a huge early-bedtime-worthy tantrum over some heart stickers that I cruelly would not let him put all over his face, I forged his name on a stack of SpongeBob cards, knowing full well that we would be the only Montessori family sending in something commercial and cartoon-based, because all the other Montessori families send in homemade Valentines. Year after year, somehow all getting and agreeing to a memo that I never got, but would probably ignore anyway. Yet once again, Ike came home with a bagged packed full of handmade asymmetrical construction paper hearts with googly eyes, glittery doilies, crayon portraits, and OF COURSE…painstakingly lettered names, even from the littlest class members.

Meanwhile, us: Goddamn SpongeBob, with me using my left hand to forge my child's signature so it would kinda maybe look like we kinda maybe tried. Yep.

(I am not even close to the only full-time working mother in this class, by the way. I am just the one who is the most bad at it.)

That Friday morning I had to tell Ezra and Noah that no, I would not be attending either of their classroom parties that day – after two straight weeks of travel I had to stay at my desk and work all day, as did Jason. Devastated, again.

At a birthday party this past weekend, another mom who attended the Valentine's party related a choice Ezra quote: “My mom had to go away on TWO trips in TWO weeks but when I get home, she’s going to be there! And she’s not going away again!”

And even though I technically did go away later that very night (to celebrate Valentine's Day with Jason and also give the poor man's fraying sanity a break), Ezra seemed quite understanding, and even opted to give me a last-minute accessory from his Valentine's stash:

(Edited super professionally to smear out his teachers' names.)

You know, it's nice to be missed. Even if the people who miss you tend to let you know that they missed you in ways that try your patience to the edge.

(And mess up your proper plank form by choosing that moment for some way overdue togetherness and bonding.)

February 06, 2015

Whoa. What happened there? Days turned into weeks and now it's February and even my family members are texting me now like, "Uh. You alive? Everything cool?"

I was in Florida this week for work, a long series of 17-hour days and no free time and the best part is that I get to do it AGAIN next week, to a different part of Florida.

This week was Orlando. I brought the kids some free maps of Legoland and Harry Potter World from my hotel as souvenirs, because I am an amazing parent who never leaves room in her suitcase to bring them back anything good and/or wildly overpriced.

(Except for YAAASSSSSSSS more Hyatt soaps. Although this week the maid figured out my hoarding game and cut me off after two soaps. Dammit.)

Within an hour of arriving at my hotel, I watched a guy trying to flirt with the concierge, who apparently is attending college for healthcare management. He wished her luck in a tough field, then walked away, but stopped to bellow "BECAUSE OBAMACARE" at me and my slightly startled (and non-eavesdropping) coworkers.

"BECAUSE OBAMACARE" became one of many team refrains for the week and our go-to excuse for everything. (An email didn't go out? Someone overslept? Cab driver got lost? BECAUSE OBAMACARE.)

We also developed a game where everyone was assigned a potential stripper name from every restaurant menu and/or strip mall store line-up. No one else found it as amusing as we did, oddly enough, although it was surprisingly easy to play once you got going. Summer Tomato Salad. Aged Cheddar Biscuits. Grouper Cheeks. Tijuana Flats. Rocco's Tacos. Supercuts.

(Grouper Cheeks and Tijuana Flats may or may not have had a little hotel room dance party on the last day, during which they may or may not have done a stunning rendition of Left Shark's moves from the Superbowl Halftime Show. They also may or may not have been punchy as hell, or simply still drunk from the night before.)

(This is what an official post-conference networking event for financial marketers looks like. It was fun. The drink tickets flowed like wine.)

And now I am home, and every child is sick or freshly recovering from a stomach bug. Noah came down with it late Wednesday night. Ike technically kicked things off last weekend before I left, recovered, and then either relapsed or caught a SECOND virus that manifested right as I arrived (frantically and directly from the airport, after my flight got delayed) to pick him up from school yesterday. His teacher was wearing latex gloves and handed me his clothing, triple-bagged.

Ezra was the last kid standing until about 6 p.m. last night, when I found him asleep on the couch.

"He'll be barfing within the hour," Jason predicted.

It was probably more like 20 minutes.

Everybody seems a little better this morning at least, while Jason and I wait out the incubation period in abject terror. He'll be on his own with the kids again all next week (he's amazing), and I'll be in Florida again from Monday through Thursday, so neither of us can afford to get sick.

After his bath last night Ike asked me to not got away again. Ouch.

One more trip, one more week. I'm sure everything will magically settle down and I'll achieve perfect work/life balance right after that. Yes. Definitely.

Oh, and I took Ike to get his first "real" haircut. A hairzcut, if you will. Six months of half-assed home haircuts (plus the complete absence of any forgiving, curl-inducing humidity) had left him pretty shaggy looking, and it was officially time to take him to see someone who actually knows how to cut hair in a semi-straight line.

(The official "Before" portrait.)

Aaaannnnd the "During."

Ike is pretty attached to his hair. I've asked him if he'd like short hair — really, I have! — and he's been adamant that he likes it long. He's told me that no, he doesn't want it cut like his brothers' hair, but then again, HE'S THREE AND A HALF, so I can think of at least a dozen things he said "no" to just this morning.

(Milk in a cup, milk not in a cup, a shirt with a zipper, a different shirt with no zipper, underwear, eggs, a non-dark-blue plate, non-green socks, shoes, carrying his own lunchbox, walking on the sidewalk, doing anything that would make our morning even slightly easier, etc.)

But man, he was NOT happy about this haircut business, even after I tried to assure him we weren't cutting off that much. This was a betrayal, and it was UPSETTING.

He calmed down eventually — thank goodness for kiddie hair salons and their ability to cut hair in under five minutes, even in the face of a wriggling, crying client. And once his hair was dry and professionally tousled, and he realized we hadn't completely cut away the source of his power.

"I still look regular," he observed, somewhat tearfully. "I still look like Ike."

Later at home, I caught him quietly contemplating a bald baby doll. I asked him what he was thinking about.

"I not a baby anymore. I don't wear diapers and I get my hair cut. I a kid now. "

So there you have it. Diapers and haircuts: The official markers of the End of Babyhood.

January 08, 2015

Ugh. What an awful week. Way to go, 2015. Way to go. I feel stupid even telling this story right now, but since I don't think there will be an Official Moment When It's Okay To Blog About The Time My Child Painted Our Cat With The Contents Of My Makeup Bag, let's just get throw this crap out there like a shiny, distracting set of jangly keys.

So. Tuesday. It was a snow day around here, and a long-ass one at that. Jason and I were in the kitchen making dinner. We'd already blown through our Blue Apron meals for the week and had to fend for ourselves with the menu-planning, which predictably led to us choosing and committing to a delicious-looking chicken recipe while completely missing that it involved an HOUR and FORTY-FIVE MINUTES of active cooking time.

The boys were all in the foyer, building a giant amusement park out of Duplo blocks. Because of course they were. Because the bin of Duplo blocks was only IN the foyer in the first place because I'd promised it to a friend with younger toddlers. Because my children hadn't even opened it in a good six months. They'll never miss 'em, I promise!

(They are now the single greatest toy we own and have completely taken over the foyer and about half of the kitchen.)

Okay, so I need to clarify that "the boys were all in the foyer" is a damned dirty lie, because at some point we heard Ike calling to us from upstairs. He sounded a bit distressed.

"THERE'S SOMETHING ON MY LEG. GET IT OFF MY LEG."

Jason went to investigate. I rolled my eyes, because he'd yelled the same damn thing at me just a couple days earlier and it turned out to be indentations from the inside seam of his pants.

This time, though, Jason was like, "What the...?"

And then, "Uh, Ame? Can you come up here?"

Long story short: Ike snuck upstairs to the master bathroom and proceeded to just...TODDLER DESTRUCTOR the shit out of it. All the drawers were open. He'd used a stool to access the medicine cabinet. The floor was covered in shaving cream. Lipstick doodles all over the cabinets. Mascara on the walls. The counter was cluttered with further cosmetic carnage — a now-empty bottle of spray tanner, squished lipsticks, pulverized blush, squeezed-out squeeze-tubes of God knows what, and most upsettingly...a couple loose tablets of Motrin and no sign of the rest of the bottle.

I don't even think Jason and I registered any single known human emotion or reaction in that moment. We both became animated emoji gifs on the fritz, trying to figure out what to freak out about first, vascillating wildly between OH EM GEEEE to DOUBLE U TEE EFF to WHAT THE SHIT?

Jason focused on the missing Motrin bottle and ascertaining if Ike had eaten any, while I ran around looking for Max. Then all the dinner timers started going off in the kitchen, because GREAT. An hour and 45 minutes of effort, coming together at precisely the wrong second.

The Motrin was eventually found (upended in a drawer, next to my mascara wand, and a goopy, cat-hair coated tube of Bacitracin), as was the childproof cap (on the floor, behind the trash can). Ike kept repeating that he hadn't eaten any of them and we could find no evidence to the contrary.

Max was nowhere to be seen.

I went downstairs to rage-serve dinner while Jason attempted to clean things up.

Max casually wandered in a few minutes later. He was...sticky.

It appeared that Ike first colored on him with bright red lipstick, and then tried to wash it off with mango-scented shaving cream.

It also appeared that Max DGAF. He was as chill as ever. He just wanted his damn dinner.

And seriously: We heard NOTHING to suggest that anything out of the ordinary was happening — Ike is a good, trustworthy kid who sticks to his brothers' sides like glue 99% of the time, and Max (being a Siamese) is not exactly a QUIET cat. And I know we can hear him yowling in our bedroom from downstairs since he does it all the time when he's playing with his toy dog or stuck on the wrong side of a door.

Ike didn't have a scratch on him, either. Which suggests that Max at least patiently tolerated all this. Or maybe even liked it?

LOOK WE'RE MAKEOVER BUDDIES YAY!

I had to give Max a bath, though, which he also (mostly) patiently tolerated, right up until the moment I decided to take a picture, which is ALSO the moment Ike opened the bathroom door and Max leapt out of the tub and into the hallway. I tackled him in a giant soppy-cat puddle before he made it too far. But then a thoroughly-startled Ike slipped on the water and fell on his butt, crying while I slammed the bathroom door and wrestled Max back into the tub.

(ACTION SHOT.)

(IKE IS NOW BANNED FROM BATHROOMS. ALL OF THEM.)

I shampooed that cat three times with three different shampoos and still couldn't get all the lipstick off. I eventually gave up because look at this poor thing:

Ike went to bed early, without dessert or watching a show with his brothers. He is deeply, deeply sorry, he says, and will never do it again. (RIGHT. CUZ YOU ARE BANNED FROM BATHROOMS.) The medicine cabinet has been reorganized to improve my youngest child's chances of making it to adulthood, JESUS CHRIST, and is mostly clean other than some additional scribbles I found behind the door. I have embraced a natural, make-up free look because guuuuhhhhh.

Max — amazingly — does not flee Ike's very presence and has accepted multiple Apology Hugs. What a trooper.

December 29, 2014

Oh yeah, look at me, blogging SO MUCH MORE, just like I promised. I am nothing if not hella consistent with being a huge goddamn flake. Anyway, here are some things that happened:

1) Jason indeed got snipped. He has offered to write a guest post about the experience, and I have accepted that offer, provided I am allowed to interrupt his entry with a lot of Parenthetical Editorial Comments. Please to expect follow-through on this idea at some point in late 2016.

2) While that procedure was literally in progress, I went and met my friend's brand-new baby boy. I held him, smelled his head, and even changed an up-the-back poop diaper like an old pro. Then I handed him back to his parents and drove home, possibly while singing DAMN IT FEELS GOOD TO BE A GANGSTA because nope, never again, not happening.

4a) Incisions are all scabbed over and incredibly gnarly looking, so vanity is not at a high point right now, just yet. I've been taking pictures of the entire before/after journey, but will likely refrain from posting anything until we get a little less slasher film. Because this is a classy fucking blog.

4b) I have good days and then days when I'm like, "fetch me a fainting couch, please, good sir, for I feel like a pile of garbage."

4c) I am no longer taking anything stronger than the occasional Tylenol, however, but am still wearing a compression garment 24/7, which is like Prescription Spanx. Medical shapewear! What a world.

4d) The More You Know: After a tummy tuck, it will be at least two weeks before you're able to walk fully upright. You will spend those first two weeks slightly hunched over, muttering about how GREAT THIS ALL IS, fixing a busted-looking stomach in exchange for permanent lower-back pain.

5) I turned 37. Meh.

("Are you old now, Mom?" Noah asked me. "Is 37 when you're closer to dying than being a baby?")

December 22, 2014

Due to my delicate condition, I outsourced the yearly trek out for the Mall Santa photo to my husband and mother-in-law last week.

I shuffled around semi-usefully just long enough to get the boys in sweaters — as "sweaters" are about as close as we get to "dress clothes" around here, since collared shirts require ironing (fuck dat), and everything else they own proudly features a) a garishly colored, licensed cartoon character on it, b) some sort of orange-y red Mystery Stain, or c) both.

So! Sweaters for everybody! Or...wait...unless... Crap, does everybody even own a sweater at this point?

Turns out, they do! I was amazed. They all even seemed pleasantly coordinated, which...huh.

A few minutes after they walked out the door, I realized that I'd just sent at least two children out wearing the same sweaters they wore in last year's Mall Santa picture, because that's the last time I gave a crap about sweaters.

Note that I possibly bought them those sweaters while they waited in line with their father, ripping tags off and shoving them over their heads while all around us, families arrived with children in velvet dresses and sport coats and tiny babies in bow ties.

And now it's 2014.

You can tell because it says so right there, and because this is probably the most awkward photo yet, as we've officially been carrying this nonsense on far too long and who gives a shit?

Also Noah is wearing a different sweater, because I studiously rejected it at the last minute last year because I thought it introduced one pattern too many to the composition. Seriously. That was a conscious thought I had and a decision I made. Why didn't anybody tell me how desperately I needed a hobby, a higher purpose, or at least a hip flask?

I'm surprised that sweater still fits, seeing how Noah now appears to be a good foot taller than ol' Saint Mall Nick himself.

When Jason got home and handed me the photos, he watched my face for a minute before volunteering that actually, this was totally the best one. Ezra kept trying to make finger guns at Santa, Noah couldn't keep his eyes open (THAT'S MY BOY AND/OR MY EYELID GENES), and Ike made that same face in every single photo because they later realized he'd taken two miniature candy canes instead of one, and was hiding them both in his clenched little fists, while his big, guilty eyes betrayed him with every flash of the camera.

Oh Mall Santa photos. You are the worst and also my favorite, because every year there's a story and every year the story gets weirder and more hilarious. To me, anyway.

I will force this ridiculousness on my poor children for as long as they'll possibly endure it, mark my crazy words.

December 01, 2014

We took the boys to a Christmas tree farm this weekend. We came home with a very beautiful tree, a bag of kettle corn, and a gigantic sticky puddle of spilled hot chocolate all over the minivan.

Have you ever gone on a family outing, taken a ton of pictures and then realized — once you were home — that basically every photo you took is an outtake, with somebody being a weirdo in every single shot? Just me?

Okay then.

Cheesy Facehole Board, Attempt #1:

From L to R: Ezra's making a pirate face, Noah's eyes are closed, my hulking shadow is distracting, and Ike is...

Oh, Ike is just LOVING this.

Cheesy Facehole Board, Attempt #2:

This time we have Suspicious Side Eye, Squinty Scrunch Face and Kid Who Smells Something Terrible.

Cheesy Facehole Board, Attempt #3:

I don't even know what's going on with Ike's face in this one. Either the sun was in his eyes or this is honestly what he thinks counts as a "smile" these days:

Cheesy Facehole Board, Attempt #4:

Ezra has now graduated to talking like a pirate, Noah is about to mime projectile vomiting because that's never NOT funny, and I think it just occurred to Ike that we're all pretending to be A BUNCH OF SEVERED HEADS IN A TREE.

Cheesy Facehole Board, Attempts #5-12:

(More of the same, minus additional points for at least one child removing his face from his facehole in every single shot.)

Group Photo in Front of Our Tree, Attempt #1:

Whoops, wait. Ike just fell down.

Group Photo in Front of Our Tree, Attempt #2:

Okay, now we've got closed eyes, kid not looking at the camera, another kid still pouting about that faceplant from 15 seconds ago, and a mother who can't properly frame up a shot to save her life.

Group Photo in Front of Our Tree, Attempts #3-5:

In which I did not realize Ike had such strong feelings about his mittens. Look at him. FUCK THESE MITTENS, he's thinking, while inexplicably tolerating a hat that is at least two sizes too big.

Ezra In the Tree Sled:

Actually, not a bad picture, although at this rate I'm never going to remember what he looked like at six years old without the big Theater Kid gestures. Also, this sled was covered in pine sap and it got all over his winter coat, something I didn't realize until this morning.

So one good photo = your child getting to be the "sticky one" at school later, and probably whispered about in the teachers' lounge, poor kid, where is his mother? I bet she's a lousy photographer too.

Jason Cutting Down Our Tree

Also not a bad picture, just a total lie. He'd gotten our tree completely cut down by the time Ezra and I returned with the sled, so he posed for a staged photo next to this other random, lesser tree. I'm telling you the truth because I love you and I don't like having secrets between us, Internets.

(So I guess I should also mention that I didn't even take the rest of these photos; I just swiped 'em off my dear husband's Facebook page.)

Ta-daaa! It's a tree with a bunch of crap on it. I will gaze upon it lovingly for about two weeks, at which point my love will turn into needle-and-sweeping-related rage, followed swiftly by ornament-removal tedium, and finally haul-to-the-curb-related misery.

November 21, 2014

I picked Ike up from school yesterday, and as I was buckling him in, he surveyed his brother's empty booster seats and promptly burst into tears.

(BREAKING: 3 year old remains 3 years old; filled to brim with drama, inner turmoil)

I assumed he was upset because Noah and Ezra weren't in the car — they are never in the car, we go directly from Ike's school to their bus stop only EVERY DAY OF HIS LIFE, but hey, don't let our thoroughly established routine get in the way of your freakout, kid — and reminded him that he'd see his brothers in just a few minutes.

I got in the car and changed the subject. I didn't have the heart to tell him — though I will break the news to you, Internet, or at least the segment of Internet who is still #TeamMoreBabies — that his father finally made his appointment for a vasectomy consult that very morning. There will be no baby sister (or more likely, given our track record, no additional baby brother oh my God can you even IMAGINE no I cannot). Sorry, once-and-forever Baby Ike, but we're done.

To celebrate, I had a couple glasses of wine last night and drunk-bought that damned infernal Taylor Swift album.

(Aside: Yes, my 3 year old talks in CAPSLOCKNOSPACEBAR. So does yours, I bet.)

Last week, that abruptly backfired on us and dropping him off at school once again became A Whole Thing, With Drama, Lots of Tears, Tiring, as Ike would demand one full round of HUGANNAKISSANNAHIGHFIVE after another, and yet never seem satisfied or ready for us to leave. Eventually we'd just have to peel him off our bodies, get in the car and drive off while he sobbed.

Unlike.

We appear to have stumbled on a new solution, which is the Return of the Robot Backpack. We'd stopped sending the backpack in to school because Ike's Robot Lunchbox is exactly the same size, because I ordered them online and had no sense of scale and/or forgot to check the product dimensions. It quickly felt like overkill to mash the lunchbox (which typically only has half of a sandwich and a wee portion of fruit tumbling around inside) inside the backpack every morning just so Ike can have shoulder straps and maaaaaybe a centimeter of additional cargo room.

Fools. Fools!

On Monday I managed (after much grunting, indignity) to cram both the lunchbox and a new pair of "inside shoes" into the backback — the children at Ike's school change their shoes upon arrival, all Mister-Rogers-like, and Ike had apparently outgrown his like, a month ago probably, whoops — and suddenly Ike was not only fine with getting out of the car, he couldn't WAIT. There was no TIME for HUGANNAKISSANNAHIGHFIVE, Mom, he had to GO. See the backpack? I am a super busy preschooler with many important things to do. Like get inside and change my shoes.

So now, Ike happily hops out of the car without even a look back. No hug, orra kiss, orra high five. Okay, I guess. FINE. BE HAPPY AND SELF-ASSURED AND INDEPENDENT. SEE IF I CARE.

Three whole days in a row! Which means forever and ever and problem permanently solved, I'm sure!

I am definitely nailing this parenting thing, if by "nailing" you mean "swinging a sledgehammer at a thumbtack while blindfolded."

***

(Not counting the time I almost lost him in the ball pit at a birthday party this weekend.)

(He was fine. He actually seemed to find this enjoyable. Although not as enjoyable as I found the moment when the "Everything is Awesome"/LEGO Movie song started to play, watching nearly two dozen 3 and 4 year olds all freeze for a split second to confirm what they were hearing, right before collectively losing their shit and running around all, OMG BECKY THIS IS MAH JAAA-AAAAA-AAAM!!!!)